Carl is on a trip with his MBA class to the East - staring in Singapore, moving onto Shanghai, back to Singapore and onto Bin Tan (Indonesian island just off Singapore). I will join him in Singapore on Sunday and we will be going to Cambodia for a week. I am in Edinburgh with my parents. Carl has the camera in China, so photos will only come a bit later But here are a couple of comments from his trip so far (I get regular sms updates) Singapore 11 Oct "Beers are 16 dollars! off to little India and China town..." [View Full Entry]

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In February, we took my car (an old Honda CVR) on an adventure. Doris and Oliver (who we met in Bolivia) joined us on the adventure. We started in Johannesburg (our home town) and drove to the Kruger Park. We spent a couple of days in the Kruger at Lukimbi and in the Sabie Sands at Idube. (These 2 lodges belong to Carl's parents). We had the most wonderful game viewing and Doris and Oliver got to see lots of amazing South African wildlife. We then headed through the Kruger Park staying overnight in Letaba, to the Mozambique border post and [View Full Entry]

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So sorry for the delay in this our last blog, but we have been wrapped up in trying to settle in to our new country (South Africa), which required adjusting to the new culture, finding jobs doing other admin and most importantly spend time with our new Golden Retriever puppy Gaucho. AUCKLAND AND THE CUMMINS’S As we taxied up the runway to Auckland International our minds immediately kicked into Spanish preparation mode, this was force of habit when arriving in a new city after a long flight/ bus journey. We were going over the words in our heads to make sure [View Full Entry]

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We took a very early morning flight from Santiago to Punte Arenas and a three-hour bus ride later we arrived bleary-eyed in the town of Puerto Natales. Disembarking from the bus we had to face the onslaught of accommodation touts waving their flyers in our faces and all shouting at once. Nicola found one offering a double room with an ensuite bathroom for 6,000 Pesos (12 US$) and we caught a ride in her very smart Pajero (must be a good business) to the hostel. When we inspected the room it was adequate and very clean but there was noisy building [View Full Entry]

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The Journey to Middle Chile - 9 buses, 72 hours of travel The Atacama frontier between Chile and Bolivia is a vast arid high altitude plain dotted with the occasional dormant volcano. There is little physical evidence of the border and the transition from one country to another included a visit to the Bolivian border control (Chilean border control was further down in the town). However, a few hundred meters after crossing into Chilean territory we encountered a herd of the endangered Vicunas (the high altitude camelids renowned for the best camelid wool), for a change they did not [View Full Entry]

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Back into Bolivia and the Journey to Tupiza When we crossed from Argentina to into the Bolivian border town of Villazon, we were hit by the all to familiar smell of Coca leaves, they were everywhere and everyone was chewing. The sheer number of bags of leaves on sale made us wonder if a large quantity wasn’t destined for the other side of the border. We soon found the bus station and purchased an onward ticket to Tupiza, as we had an hour to spare it seemed like a good time for lunch. We found a place close to the bus [View Full Entry]

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Iguaçu and the Journey to Salta Exiting in Brazil in a bus adorned in Argentinean flags we passed through immigration and on into the town of Puerto Iguaçu, where the driver kindly stopped so we could buy tickets for our onward journey to Salta. Being so used to the Portuguese not being able to speak Spanish I walked into the ticket office and asked, “ Abla espanol?” (Do you speak Spanish), Carl and the lady I had addressed found this astonishing and after a brief pause to digest the stupidity of my question burst out laughing. Of course she spoke [View Full Entry]

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Rio without Sun Day 1 After a triple flight voyage from La Paz to Rio with some very tight connections we breathed a huge sigh of relief when Nicola’s bag arrived eventually appeared on the baggage carousel (it was very nearly the last bag to arrive whereas Carl’s bag had arrived first). It had been some time since Venezuela and we had neglected to take our standard precautionary measures against baggage loss: keep camera charger in camera bag, pack a small package of essentials into each others bags and put all the medicines in our hand luggage. We emerged [View Full Entry]

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I´m in Chile in an internet cafe with Real Coffee. Wow! Guess its a good place to write an entry. From Rio we flew via Sao Paulo to Johannesburg for Kara and Andrew’s long anticipated wedding. We were quite please to be going to our new home for a short while as it gave us a chance to drop off some of the extra baggage we had accumulated. Our time in South Africa was exceedingly busy and we had very little time for anything not related to the wedding, such as recovery. First major event was Andrew’s stag do, which started [View Full Entry]

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As most of you will still be digesting our mammoth Peru blog, you will be happy to see that this one is relatively short. This is not due to the fact that we are getting lazy but because we had to return to South Africa in the middle of our trip for Kara’s (Carl’s sister) wedding limiting our time in Bolivia to only 6 days. So this Bolivian part of our trip is a “to be continued…“ episode interspersed by Brazil (Rio), South Africa, Brazil (again), Paraguay* and Argentina*. * Please note that these are intended destinations and may or may [View Full Entry]

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